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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28971873">Take Me for a Ride</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbreon_ly/pseuds/Umbreon_ly'>Umbreon_ly</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(sssh it's a secret), Alternate Universe, Commoner Hanamaki, Flowers, Fluff, Friendship, Gardening, Hanamaki doesn't know Matsukawa is the king and Matsukawa rolls with it, Humor, Issei and Hiro's very very long first date, King Matsukawa, M/M, Magic, Romance, Royalty AU, Royalty Matsukawa, So does most of Aoba Johsai because lmao, Verbal Savagery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 07:47:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,438</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28971873</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbreon_ly/pseuds/Umbreon_ly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The sovereign king of Aoba Johsai was King Issei Matsukawa, but visitor Takahiro Hanamaki somehow does not know that. When they meet, the king does not correct him. Hanamaki refers to him as a "butler" and he lets that go. He lets him into the castle. He lets him into the royal gardens and sits with him among the grand array of flowers.  </p><p>Hanamaki offers him a rose and says, "Wanna skip work?" </p><p>King Matsukawa lets visitor Hanamaki take him down into the city during the spring festival, to skip work. </p><p>They have fun.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hanamaki Takahiro/Matsukawa Issei</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>32</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Man, it's tough how MatuHana is so often this off-camera side ship in other stories and rarely gets its own fics. I wanted to write something for them, and I'm a fan of AUs, but I'm not very good at writing characters whose personalities mostly boil down to being jokesters and endless memeing. So I had to write a longish (20-25k by the end I'm thinkin) fic to give them background, nuance, grow a relationship between them and play with some narrative ideas I've got for them. Can't do meme must write novella. </p><p> </p><p>  <a href="https://twitter.com/inochi_m/status/1319243469815050240">Inspired by this art by Inochi_m on twitter</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> -</p><p>The shipyard opened to the river district where civilian homes of fine stone were built on or near the water. The river district opened to the long market, where commerce and coin daily flowed. The long market wound uphill to the castle’s west entrance, where men and women were gathering to celebrate the upcoming day. The entrance opened to the royal throne room where sunlight shone through many stained-glass windows, tall as houses and old as the Kingdom of Aoba Johsai. Faint noises of bustling and commotion drifted from outside, but in the throne room it was quiet and still.</p><p>There was a window of plain glass between each of the stained-glass ones in the throne room. Both colored and natural light came in, so that it was always bright even if it was lifeless. The carpet was patterned with warm sunlight and patches of summery green and blue. Much of the room was colorful and modeled its architecture on the growing plants that kept the kingdom strong and healthy.</p><p>The darkest part of the room was a man standing near the west wall alone. He wore a black tailored suit. The morning was early, but he had stood there for a very long time already.</p><p>The suit shone like it had never been worn. It was fully black but for a pattern or gold embroidery over the left side. It curled like gold vines around and below the heart. A name was stitched above. The suitcoat itself was deep-shadow-black, darker than all the outfit’s black shades put together. The shirt below was a cooler charcoal. There were dull green cufflinks and firmly ironed lapels and matching shoes that had never scuffed. The body carrying all this was still, and the eyes were still, and the face sagging. He had stood there for too long.  </p><p>A knight was in the massive room with him, nearby but not looking at him. Too busy muttering. The man hardly noticed. He noticed his own exhaustion, more present today than usual. Today was the eve of a holiday. And yet otherwise, today was much like any other day to a man wearing this suit, attending to this room.</p><p>For reasons untold, today was heavy.</p><p>He tried to distract from the weight. “No one’s tried to assassinate me this year,” he mused aloud.</p><p>“You want me to try?” griped the knight.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>That was all. Most days the jibe would have lasted longer. The friend on the other end of it would have had to hear much more pestering. The knight would have noticed on most days, but today he had his own distractions too.</p><p>The knight was Captain Iwaizumi to most and Hajime to a few men and his mother. The man knew him as Hajime more often than not. His attention was on a handful of legal documents whose contents, complexities and required signatures were making him grind his teeth.</p><p>“I’m gonna assassinate whoever caused that ship crash last night. Someone’s losing their job. Me and Kyoutani will go straight to the docks and keep pursing that, once I’m done here.  </p><p>The man had witnessed that crash last night, albeit from a high window and entirely by coincidence. There were many ships in the lagoon this week, carrying supplies, tourists, food and goods to sell to the tourists. They and the usual shipping traffic had crowded the lagoon last night, as expected. The man had leaned idly against a windowsill last night and watched an accident in that traffic. Or if not an accident, then a regret. Someone surely regretted it.  </p><p>A galleon with foreign flags and foreign build had swung wildly to starboard towards an Aoba-native construction hauler carrying timber. The hauler leaned into the oncoming boat instead of trying to escape its path. The ships cracked against each other like the skulls of drunken dance partners, and then the bashed-together chests of drunken dance partners, and then the tangled legs of drunken dance partners. Some timber fell into the lagoon.</p><p>This morning, the minor fires were long put out but the boats were still there in the lagoon suffering a dramatic hangover. The masts remained tangled as a pair of dueling stags, and small boats of dockworkers and officers continued to patrol around them. Any other boat going anywhere was gaping at the mess as they went by.</p><p>A theatrical slow-motion crash like that should have drawn more from him than an annoyed little pursing of his lips than it did. This morning he felt no compulsion or reason to say anything about it. There were no casualties but lost materials and today he didn’t give a shit.</p><p>Even if he didn’t give a shit, even if he didn’t care to even look at him right now, it was certain fact that he cared about Hajime.</p><p>“And after you sort out the crash, you will have a drink, Hajime.”</p><p>“I’ll consider it if—” His knight stopped midsentence, nearly biting his tongue. All his motions stopped, too, as he waited for elaboration. But none came.</p><p>It was not a typical friendly suggestion today but a command. <em>You will. </em></p><p>The man said from his place in the sunbeam, “Kyoutani will report to me what you order. I’m sure it’ll be delicious and loosening for you, which you need. At least two glasses, and more if you desire them.”</p><p>The drink would have to be exactly that, because there could be no lying to him if he was asked.  </p><p>Hajime straightened his posture and stopped his grumbling, assuming the stance of <em>Iwaizumi</em> before the man now. He did risk a glance up from the memorandum he was signing. Still no eye contact, still turned away. He drifted in slow steps from the direct path of the sunbeam to out of it. Then into a patch of dappled green from one of the stained-glass windows. It painted his suit with stripes of green like a vein of precious stone beneath the earth. Weighed upon by tons of rock and men aboveground.  </p><p>Iwaizumi stepped closer to the line of professionalism their unique jobs demanded and asked from across it, “Are you feeling okay?”</p><p>“Not really.”</p><p>The man stood still. Iwaizumi’s hands crinkled on the papers he held. It made the only sound in all the throne room. A bell rang and a crowd chattered somewhere far downhill.</p><p>He couldn’t abide the silence still in the room. “Would you, uh, would you tell me what’s bot—”</p><p>“Nothing. Don’t ask me again.”</p><p>Iwaizumi pulled back across the line. “Yes. Sire.” He was far beneath royal blood, though this wasn’t rare for men and women in the king’s closest circle. But it afforded Iwaizumi the excuse to not have to ask further. He would concede and avoid the matter as he was directed. Today, that felt best for his friend anyway.</p><p>The knight held the legal decrees at a proper waist level and summarized some aloud: “The councilmen will go with me and Oikawa to the courthouse. Then Kyoutani and I can split off and go to the shipyard, and. And get a drink. But by that time, people will start coming towards the town center and setting up their things for tomorrow. May I take my leave?”</p><p>As he talked, he saw the man’s head turning slowly away, not looking at the throne in the far back of the room, or at any of the windows or the decorative green and white carvings on the wall. He looked everywhere and absorbed nothing, like a drunk or a man who’d been struck in the head. Now Hajime couldn’t keep the puzzlement off his face.  </p><p>“Sire?”</p><p>“You may go. Enjoy the day.”</p><p>Iwaizumi looked at his back striped with that green light, gave him a deserving bow and left. He crossed from the midpoint of the room to the outer doors, already open to the morning outside. Then he was gone, and the only sound was a handful of guards somewhere beyond that door, and then they were quiet, too. There was silence in the throne room.</p><p>No councilmen around for the moment, since Iwaizumi was rounding them all up to enact and enforce all the administrative nonsense that had been signed and co-signed in the last few weeks. No other knights here since they tended to unstrap their metal armor and help with festival construction around holidays like this. No citizens to visit or issues to settle today, because that would all wait for two days at the least.</p><p>Nothing wrong. Just silence, buzzing in his mind and all his limbs. Dragging. Dragging. Heavy.</p><p>The man went slowly to the dais at the back of the room, which sat empty today. The stone of its rectangular base was nearly white, speared through with thin green veins. The seat of the throne was made of the same color, proudly wearing gemstones at its top: white opals, green ones, a single black. On the seat of the throne sat a gold crown carved with pale green leaves above the forehead band.</p><p>The man took two steps up towards the throne and held out his hand towards the seat, casting a shadow over the crown, a foot or two away from his fingertips. The crown lifted up from the seat of the king and floated gently into his hand.</p><p>It felt familiar in his grip. The carving of it was intentionally light and the forehead band curved softly to avoid pressing and irritating the wearer’s head. The king wore it easily. And the king played with it easily: this crown had been thrown around and dropped on the floor dozens of times in the last fifteen or twenty years. But it would never dent or scar.</p><p>The king tossed the crown up in the air, caught it in one lazy hand. The second time he almost dropped it. Instead of doing that a third time, he took to twirling it on one gloved finger.</p><p>As the crown spun and spun in a slow orbit, the king walked slowly through the long belt of patches of light made by the windows. Sunlight, glass-light, sunlight, glass-light.</p><p>
  <em>I’m tired. I’m tired. </em>
</p><p>Ten minutes passed like this. Alone. It was an interim between duties, between thoughts. Something neighboring unconsciousness. It was a little span of peace, his last for a while. </p><p>The man’s sense of duty eventually buoyed up through his mental fog and tugged him back towards reality. He kept holding the crown, because no one could tell him what to do with it and spinning it around had always been fun.</p><p>Unbreakable fidgeting toy in hand, he left the room through one of the back passageways, which took visitors from the throne room itself to the rest of the castle beyond it.</p><p>This hall’s ceiling shrank from forty feet above a man’s head to merely ten, and wide enough for almost two horse-drawn wagons instead of twenty. There were square windows on the left, tall and narrow, and tapestries older than most Aoba Johsai citizens on the right. The windows were nearly two stories above ground and overlooked slopes covered in carefully tended greenery and flowers and ancient trees. Seijoh Castle had adeptly grown all of these. They hinted at the even more gorgeous splendor growing higher above in the Royal Gardens, out of sight from below, and were intended to incite less wealthy men to jealousy. The man had grown a couple of them though he didn’t remember which.</p><p>Usually, the man only looked straight ahead when walking here, appreciating none of the sights on the left or right. But not today. This time, something bid him look over to the windows.</p><p>One of the windows was open and a man sat on the sill, one leg up on the ledge and the other dangling down out the window.</p><p>The man’s walk slowed in a practiced manner as it did before royal guests who were expected to bow before he stopped. But that routine broke down and he was the one to stop instead. Part of the surprise was a pile of intellectual realizations that all tackled him at once: the man in the window wore no mark of the Matsukawa household on his clothes or bearing—he was not a part of the castle’s employ—he was not a known guest—he did not recognize him—and his hair was pink as a dahlia.</p><p>He was a stranger and he had snuck in. Seijoh Castle hadn’t known such an intrusion in many years. The man didn’t know how many years. He couldn’t think or count how many years, or really think or count at all just then.</p><p>He stared with slightly parted lips as he memorized this strange picture of the man in the window. So busy was he memorizing that the painting in his head became animated and he also memorized the view of the stranger turning and looking him in the eye.</p><p>“Morning,” the stranger said.</p><p>His clothes were unrefined but clean. His shirt was worn unbuttoned, unprofessional, and open nearly down to the waistline of the pants. The pants were black suspenders, with one strap fully off the shoulder and hanging at waist level. Air drifting in from outside stirred the lapels of the shirt and the strands of dahlia-pink hair that hung down nearly to his brow, like petals moving in a breeze.</p><p>The stranger did not fit any common appearance of an assassin, or a political rival, or an agent of foreign ambush. Maybe a pickpocket. Nothing the man himself could not dispatch if caught off-guard and alone in his own home. Which he was.  </p><p>“Hello,” the man said back weakly, noticeably late.</p><p>“Don’t arrest me, I’m mostly innocent,” the stranger said, holding up a placating hand. His leg that hung outside the window came up to rest on the windowsill, and the one that had been already on the sill now was resting against the indoor wall. “I’m sure I…<em>look </em>deeply suspicious. But that’s totally coincidental.”</p><p>Now he hopped down from the windowsill, landing his common workman’s boots on royal-made flooring, and then grinning. “Hi, sir. Morning. I’m here to see your secret garden.”</p><p>The man had a wordless buzz of emotions at this. There was still fog in him from the throne room, from most rooms he’d been in for the past several months. Tangled around someone asking to see his <em>secret garden </em>and feeling an attraction to a someone he didn’t know tumbled into something like mental nausea. So he vomited it out.   </p><p>“This is the worst assassination attempt I’ve seen in years. A full minute and I haven’t been stabbed? And you’re leaving a window open? I’ll have to report you to your employer after I send your dead body back to him.”</p><p>An assassin probably wouldn’t have laughed, but the stranger did. The stranger had a deep laugh and a deep voice. It stopped the man’s sharp words and cut off any new ones right at the tongue, by fumbling his speech.</p><p>It was a strange sight, this assassination attempt, this dock worker’s outfit, that deep voice. Usually baritone voices didn’t come out of persons with any significant amount of pink on them. Usually odd encounters like this had an expected and stabby end and were already over by this point in the conversation.  </p><p>“Well, I don’t have an employer,” the dahlia-colored stranger returned casually. “I’m, uh, in between jobs right now.”</p><p>“Wow.”</p><p>“So, it’s nothing—”</p><p>“<strong>Shut up</strong>.”</p><p>He did.</p><p>His voice paralyzed the stranger into staying where he was. His strange casual expression froze on his face and did not dare change, or move, or run. If he did, he would find it difficult.</p><p>“Stop dancing, stranger. You’re fifty steps from the throne. And you’re in my shadow. Explain yourself to me or I’ll tie you to a prison wall in the dark. Alone with me, for as long as I please. Now. Speak.”</p><p>The stranger breathed deeply a few times, blinked a few times, and his charming, unbothered grin came back even stronger than it already was.</p><p>Laughing a little, the stranger said, “Sir, <em>please</em> calm your eyebrows. I’m here strictly for tourism and not royal homicide, or any other kind of homicide.”</p><p>The man in black saw a few black spots in his vision. He bit his tongue.</p><p>“Say that to me. Again.”</p><p>“I brought a tourism fee. It’s in my inner shirt pocket and it’s not a knife, all right, so don’t chop my hand off,” the pink-colored imbecile intruder went on. His hand traveled there slowly, ducked behind the cloth, and came out of that open shirt with a tiny cloth bag in hand. It was white, opaque silk, no larger than a woman’s palm. White coins jangled inside. Not a single other color within. That number would have paid for a re-stitching of the embroidery on the man’s fine suitcoat. It would have paid for the stranger to buy ten or twelve more outfits of the type he was wearing.</p><p>“Yes, I snuck in your castle but no, I’m not here to assassinate anybody for Lord’s sake. I am <em>just </em>here to lay eyes on the greatest garden in the country, and not bother anybody or take anything, and you don’t even have to know I was here, get me?” In the little pause in which he got no response, he jabbed at the man in black and the tiny coin purse jangled again.</p><p>
  <em>What—the—</em>
</p><p>“You got the Matsukawa name stitched on your suitcoat there. If you work for the royal family, maybe you know where the royal gardens are at. Could give me a hint on where to go. You do work here, right?”</p><p>
  <em>WHAT—</em>
</p><p>The stranger was blatantly in his shadow. In his castle, in his city, in his presence, and the stranger thought he fucking “worked here<em>.</em>”</p><p>He lifted the crown in his hands and started to twirl it the way he liked. He almost managed a laugh, for the first time that day.</p><p>“Yes. I work here.”</p><p>This pleased the stranger. “Then I am just a humble customer visiting your workplace,” the stranger said. He dropped the little bag cleanly into the kerchief pocket on the left side of the man’s suitcoat, above where his own surname was embroidered on the breast. He stared at the bulged pocket like a silk bag of leeches had been dropped in it.</p><p>“For services rendered,” the stranger added.</p><p>“Did you just pay me.”</p><p>“Yeah, for services.”</p><p>The man ran out of thoughts.</p><p>“…You’re…sure?” he asked after a bit. “I haven’t rendered anything yet.”</p><p>“I disagree,” said the stranger. His gaze wandered from that pocket across his chest, to his collar and finally back to his face. The stranger looked more admiring than grateful. Suddenly it was difficult to calm his eyebrows.</p><p>“So. I’ll be on my best manners, don’t touch anything, don’t talk to anybody, don’t assassinate anyone on accident or dive under ladies’ petticoats. And no telling anyone that the nice butler saw me come in. Because I myself didn’t see anybody in this hallway.”</p><p>The king exhaled a single, hard laugh so hard it came out nearly as a cough. “Sir…what if I sound the alarm anyway, even if you said you’re ‘mostly innocent?’ Because ‘mostly arrested’ is still pretty damn arrested. Plus, being an employee here, in royal grounds, the guards will probably take my side of any incident, not yours.”</p><p>Sighing, he replied, “My well-dressed sir, I’m not cultured like yourself, so if you really snitch on me right after you took my money, I am just going to fucking bite you like a rat, and then run.”</p><p>This time he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. Hard enough to close his eyes and bend his spine a little. The crown hung on two fingers and nearly dropped to the floor. The stranger just grinned, like he was proud of some of his own handiwork, rubbing his knuckles on his chin. At this point At this point it was impossible not to grin back. He had an infectious expression; now the man stood infected.</p><p>“God. I needed to laugh.”</p><p>“Yes, you looked like it.”</p><p>He took a nice, slow post-laugh inhale. “The royal garden is only to be seen by the king and the master gardeners. And their chosen guests.” His eyes combed the stranger from the crown of his head to his worn and dented boots: the open shirt and loose suspender strap, the left hand casually stuck in the pocket while the other hung down, the funny dahlia-pink hair again. Pale pink as a hand-nurtured petal grown by a master gardener. “And you’re none of those. So why <em>shouldn’t </em>I hand your money back, and kindly request that hop out the window the way you came?”</p><p>“No reason, I guess. I can’t make you,” the stranger said with a shrug and a displeased jerk of his thin little eyebrows. “I’m not a master gardener. Just a plain one at best. And this is my first day in Aoba Johsai, the city that grows everything, I may never come here again and hell, I thought I’d try. Also kinda thought I might, like, get in here unnoticed, ‘cause apparently there’s a festival happening here tomorrow and people are all running around for that.”</p><p>The man absorbed all these patchwork facts and said: “Hm, so <em>literally</em> no reason. You just want a free ticket to a luxury location.”</p><p>“Dude, I def do not appreciate the judgmental attitude—”</p><p>“<em>Dude</em>—?”</p><p>“<em>Stop</em>, stop,” the stranger said, waving his hand. “Just lemme translate that out of my fucking-rat-commoner tongue for you, Mr. Matsukawa Family Butler: I do find your cruel rejection of my heart’s desires most egregious and uncool. Let mine strongly worded letter to thine manager ring true. Yea and forsooth—”</p><p>Yea and forsooth, the man exploded from a charmed chuckle to an echoing laugh within seconds—especially since there were no family butlers in the hall.</p><p>
  <em>No, I think there is one now. </em>
</p><p>The stranger kept talking, and the man kept laughing.</p><p>Every second of it branded his unspoken decision even further. This felt too good. He was laughing like he was making up for past missed opportunities to do so. He still held the crown in one hand, fingers loose around the forehead band and between some of the leaf carvings. The stranger did not even seem to realize what he was holding. Even when he covered his mouth for a moment and it was in clear view near his face, he only looked at the man’s smirking face over the golden tines.  </p><p>Looking at each other, both could see that a little sort of magic had been done. The fog that weighed on him in the throne room before was dissipating. Even if the pink-haired stranger hadn’t seen that, that <em>something </em>had dissipated was more than clear. Enough of a something that he might just avoid arrest and the dark of a prison cell.</p><p>The man’s face remained warm. He let the crown in his right hand sink to rest neutrally at his thigh. “So, you’re a ‘gardener?’ You mean by profession or as a hobby? And what sort of gardening?” he asked.</p><p>The stranger’s face remained warm and charmed, too. Unfazed. “Both at different times. Mostly flowering gardens. And landscaping yards and properties that haven’t been landscaped since God put them together. I’ve planted half a million roses. Hell of a lot of tulip beds, orchids, and cherry blossom trees. Lilies from all zones, and I’ve kept bonsai too.”</p><p>“You move the earth by hand-digging or with tools?”</p><p>“Hand-digging mostly, except to move rocks. I’ve done miniature plows, and they’ve done damage, so we ain’t friends anymore. A healthy garden is made slowly after the new soil has settled. And if the land’s flat, the first thing you gotta grow is vegetables, if you can.”</p><p>"What is the difference between a trellis and a lattice?"</p><p>"A trellis is any wooden thing meant to support plants. Or for vines to grow. You display your climbers, and maybe set it in front of something ugly to cover it up. A lattice is just the criss-cross pattern in the wood structure. You can <em>use </em>a lattice <em>as </em>a trellis."</p><p>“You’ve kept any plants alive that were dying from overwatering?”</p><p>“Yeah, by draining the soil by hand. If I didn’t, phytophthora root rot would’ve killed the yews I was growing. A <em>royal </em>garden like yours probably has earthenware piping in the ground to keep drainage levels regulated in the spots you need it, right?” </p><p>“The master gardener Mizoguchi has said to feed orchids every so often. How often?”</p><p>“Uh. I don’t know who that is, but it’s probably no more than once a month. Orchids are pretty needy.”</p><p>“What’s your name?”</p><p>“Hanamaki,” he said without missing a beat.</p><p>The man also missed none. “And your first name?”</p><p>A few quick, quiet beats went by without him. “Takahiro.”</p><p>Hanamaki Takahiro: apparently a passable gardener, but still a stranger. That he didn’t belong in this place had no effect on his easygoing manner. The quick request for his name was the first thing to even faintly trip him. He asked immediately after, “And yours?”</p><p>As a last opportunity for Hanamaki’s hilarious ignorance, the man told him, “Issei.”</p><p>But there was no answer but a silent nod. He kept going, to prevent there being a mirroring question to him. “And I don’t think I’ll arrest you.”</p><p>“Nice.”</p><p>“But I will escort you.”</p><p>“…Huh?”</p><p>“After I write a letter to my manager.”</p><p>“W-whh,” Hanamaki stuttered, but this time it was undoubtedly with nervousness. “Tha—like, is that a coded message? Should I jump out the window and run?”</p><p>“Nah. Just wait. Look like you have an appointment with someone here and no one will bother you. I’m going to take you to the gardens myself, no sneaking involved. But I have to clear you for entry first. Safety protocols, you know. Oh, and I have to send for someone to take this crown away. For cleaning.”</p><p>“You serious?”</p><p>Issei nodded and meant it. “Yep. Like you said, I could use a laugh. You want to view the royal gardens? Let’s take a field trip and go. Consider it a service about to be rendered. Understand me?”</p><p>Hanamaki’s lips curved up to one side, but then he bit his lip to calm himself. His eyes went left and right, as though still expecting secret entourages of guards to leap out. None did. So he stuck his hands in his pockets and stepped away till his back was to the window he’d climbed through. Now he was no more than a man waiting to meet with castle staff, and he looked like a staff member’s less fortunate cousin. He was, after all, recently finished with breaking and entering.</p><p>Standing in that spot created a bright outline of sunlight round Hanamaki’s silhouette. Once he was waiting there, officially verified and all, his casual smile took root again. He looked away like he hadn’t a care.</p><p>Issei tossed the crown up and caught it in the same hand, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “Good boy. Wait there.”</p><p>And he walked down the hall, further from the throne, the way he’d been walking before he’d met this intruder. His gait was brisk and purposeful this time, no longer dragging. He knew just where to go.</p><p>Far down the hall and just within sight Hanamaki’s sight was a callbox hanging on the wall opposite from all the windows. It opened like a medicine cabinet and held useful objects inside for castle staff moving about different levels and tasks throughout the day. There was also a small dumbwaiter in the rear to transfer items between floors, which he would need soon. On the right was the actual callbox mechanism for staff members within the castle to speak to each other, but he didn’t need to pick this up just yet. Lastly, there was also a small pile of paper and clean, neatly arranged set of feather pens to write with.</p><p>Hanamaki was too far away, and at too hard an angle, to see what was in the open cabinet door. Much too far to see that Issei had picked up a feather pen and was writing instructions on paper with his own name and his own own seal stamped at the top.</p><p>Issei wrote the following, as well as a few other things:</p><p>
  <em>Do not disturb, speak, or ask for entry verification towards the following guest of Seijoh: Takahiro Hanamaki: man of mid-20s age, dockworker’s garb, pink hair. He is in my shadow. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Guest will be escorted by myself to the royal gardens.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Guest is a moron from outside Aoba Johsai who does not know my title or my face, thinks I am a butler. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>*All staff: DO NOT INFORM HIM OF MY IDENTITY IN ANY WAY. It’s too funny. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>*All staff: adhere to this “butler” assumption in his presence. Address me as such. Address me by my given name or “sir”. Hold this protocol until otherwise decreed. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Continue spring festival preparations as scheduled. </em>
</p>
<ul>
<li><em>By the hand of the King. </em></li>
</ul><p>-</p><p>Hanamaki looked out the window at the flowerbeds and ancient trees far below the window, thinking.</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thanks for reading Chapter One. I have Chapter Two mostly written and plan to post it around a week from now (Early Feb 2021?) but after that updates will be utterly sporadic and less frequent. I have a full time job and other WIPs to write, and most of what I write is too damn long. Couple of those WIPs are zine pieces, meaning shorter works that'll be done overall sooner but they get priority writing time. I'm also just a damn slow writer most of the time. Sorry bros.</p><p>Anyway, the rest of the story covers just this one day. The two of them meet here, spend a long, long day together...and the story will end after maybe 6 chapters and when it's late at night :)</p><p>EXTRA STORY BITS YOU DON'T REALLY HAVE TO READ, THANKS FOR COMING BYYYE</p><p>- Matsukawa has some magic powers, which will be made more clear to the reader but not other characters. The AJ royal family doesn't publicly admit that they have them. It's a very "of course magic isn't real ;)))) " situation, and the magic in the story will be...mostly...understated. I'm wondering which hints of magic people caught vs didn't catch.</p><p>- Master Gardeners make bank and growing beautiful plants is important and popular in Aoba Johsai culture (like...irl professional sports? Uhh) but I knew next to nothing about gardening prior to googling around for this fic. I got so into my google research though that I'm now considering growing roses in my apartment.</p><p>- Looking forward to a couple of the future funny dialogue exchanges I wrote for these guys. Calm ur eyebrows</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*breathes* A 6.5k chapter when I hoped for 4k is FINE. My usual chapters for any story are more like 10-12k. This is still an improvement. </p><p>A 6.5k chapter and I wrote 3k of it in the last 24 hours. Ha! Enjoy.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>By the hand of the King. </em>
</p><p>The hand of the king set in motion the whim of the king. All staff in the castle today would know the new decree within thirty minutes, from guards and administrators to cooks and cleaners. The king stood by the callbox a minute longer, waiting to see if a message or phone call would come asking for clarification. But only an acknowledgement came through, signed by Shigeru and his father. He would address them both as Mr. Yahaba, and they would address him similarly. He wrote a note back asking that they pick up the crown, which he was leaving in the callbox cabinet.</p><p>A good distance away stood Mr. Takahiro Hanamaki, a stranger and likely foreigner whose crime of breaking into Castle Seijoh <em>could </em>be punished with five years in prison. And much more.</p><p>He stood by the open window through which he’d done his breaking and entering. He looked out at the fine trees and pastel gardens below which flowered so beautifully in the presence of Seijoh, in the kingdom of Aoba Johsai. Like he had no care for the gravity of his crime, or his ignorance, or who he was talking to.</p><p>Hanamaki stood in a patch of sunlight made by the window, not unlike Issei had not thirty minutes before in the throne room. How he drifted from sunlight to stained-glass-green light and back till it began to strain his eyes. But Hanamaki was only in natural sunlight, and even from here it made the strange coloring of his hair proudly shine. There was a proud shine to his directionless smile as well, while he looked down at valuable and esteemed Aoba-grown plants. As though he’d had fuck-all to do with growing them himself.</p><p>There was a shine to his color and his clothes and his voice and his odd remarks that all steered Issei’s decision to take him somewhere that was not a jail cell. He felt a compulsion to take this man to the Aoba Johsai Gardens as he desired. And they would both avoid the throne room this way.</p><p>When he started back down the hall towards Hanamaki, he responded immediately by facing Issei for his whole approach. Hands in his pockets, hope for a good fate written on his face. But his posture was tense, indicating some amount of self-awareness.  </p><p>“So, uh?” he prompted.</p><p>“So let’s go.”</p><p>“So I won’t be tackled and taken to prison on the way there? Or after?”</p><p>“Nope,” Issei said, unblinking. “We just received clearance to let you through, so no one will stop us on the way. Come on, plain gardener.”</p><p>Hanamaki huffed out a disbelieving exhale that came with a lopsided grin. “And you’ll come with?”</p><p>Yes, he’d like to, he told him. Then they both had lopsided grins. </p><p>“Thank you, Issei.”</p><p>It was a beautiful day.</p><p>Issei beckoned him with his hand, and turned so that he would follow. Hanamaki did. His first few steps were brisk to catch up to him and then they walked side by side. They were both looking straight ahead at first, but Hanamaki soon turned his head to try and catch his eye. But now Issei wouldn’t look.</p><p>“I wasn’t looking to get a guy in trouble,” the stranger said softly. “If you want, I can punch you in the throat and make it look like I threatened you into asking your manager’s permission for this.”</p><p>“No need. I got you on the ‘chosen guest’ list and that’s all we need. I wanted to get the hell out of the throne room anyway.”</p><p>At this, Hanamaki gave a knowing little laugh, a deep sound. “Looking for a distraction from work, then?”</p><p>“I really am.”</p><p>“Are <em>you </em>allowed in the gardens normally? Do employees get to be ‘chosen guests’”?</p><p>Issei confirmed that he was on the guest list and could be whenever necessary, which seemed to satisfy his new companion. They passed the closed callbox which contained the king’s crown, waiting to be picked up by another spare hand. Just beyond, the hall ended and left them to turn either left or right. Issei led them to the left, where there were more windows on their left side, but old historical documents on the right, rather than tapestries as in the previous hall.</p><p>The framed documents caught Hanamaki’s attention even less and his eyes instead flicked away to the view out the windows more than once. It was the same grand, hand-reared array of plant life he’d been looking at before, but from a different angle.</p><p>“What kind of plants do they have up there?” Hanamaki asked, eyes still averted. “Have you been there recently? Because I’ve read there’s varieties that don’t grow anywhere else. Not in Aoba Johsai, not in the countryside or other nations or anything. Like saffron crocuses and the lonely night flower. And the Kadupul, of course! It’s extinct everywhere now, except there. I mean, shit, you probably already know that. But it’s wild to me.”</p><p>It wasn’t rare that wealthy citizens who paid their way to attend or host an engagement in the royal gardens would have a piece published in a magazine, or newspaper, or their published memoir, about the botanical accomplishments they had seen there. Aoba Johsai’s crops flourished and rarely suffered rot, and their gardens were of such beauty that they attracted foreign tourists, like Hanamaki. The kingdom casually preened at this national reputation, but Issei mostly rolled his eyes.</p><p>“Yeah, those are all there,” he said flatly; his tone made Hanamaki’s brows exaggeratedly furrow together. “I’m not much of a fan of Kadupul. Just, white flowers, and the long, long petals? Eh. Just never loved white.”</p><p>“Oh, well the royal family should be shaking in their boots,” Hanamaki huffed. “Precious Kadupul stems? Torch ‘em. Issei doesn’t like ‘em.”</p><p>“Maybe they would torch ‘em since <em>I’m </em>a chosen guest, Mr. Hanamaki,” he pretended to sneer back. “And I <em>used</em> to go there all the time before my duty list changed a while back. And I saw many flowers that were not Kadupul and tended to their care, too. The master gardeners saw me almost every day.”</p><p>“They <em>should </em>be shaking in their boots,” Hanamaki gasped with feigned awe. “A butler going after the master gardeners’ jobs? Their resumes are quaking in fear.”</p><p>“They better be, after I replanted so many bamboo shoots in the north quarter I could have applied for dual citizenship as a panda.”</p><p>Hanamaki was quaking, first with soft chuckles and then booming laughter the next. He had a boyish laugh for such an excessively masculine voice. Issei took in a breath so he could keep going: “I went there so often they changed the ‘welcome to the garden’ staff entrance sign to ‘welcome to the garden, <em>Issei’.” </em></p><p>A trio of aides appeared from a doorway not far ahead of them. Hanamaki was in the middle of saying, “Well, Mr. Issei, they’re about to change it again, to—” when he noticed their approach and cut himself off with a gasp. Issei lifted his hand and gave him an assuring wave to keep talking. “You sure? It’s, I’m, uh—”</p><p>When they came near, Issei gave them a professional, quick sign of greeting: two Yahabas, senior and junior—Shigeru, the son he knew personally—as well as a female scribe named Misaki. She was the one to raise her hand and respond, “Morning, sir! See you at the noon staff meeting!” before the trio all passed them.</p><p>There was no such thing as a noon staff meeting, but Misaki would probably find a cake delivered to her apartment for pretending that there was. Hanamaki turned halfway around and looked wide-eyed back at the trio once they’d passed like he expected the ‘noon staff meeting’ to manifest to life and attack him.</p><p>“I told you no one’s going to tackle you, you clown,” Issei chuckled. “I mean, except me. If you try anything suspect, <em>I </em>will take you down myself. As a reminder.”</p><p>Hanamaki whipped back around. His pink fringe flopped to the side from the motion and settled just above his brows again. Issei was grinning at his dramatically offended face. “You and your threats of bodily harm. What do you think I’m really seeking in your fancy garden? Gold? Women? Power? I want to look at plants, you damn walnut.” His tone was half-serious, which faded to fully non-serious as Issei kept chuckling at him.</p><p>When that began to die down, Hanamaki started talking again. “Your job must be a real bore, if taking a guy for a walk livens up your day so much. Do you like, uh, butler duties or not? Well, working for royalty, I should say. I’ve never had such an esteemed job.”</p><p>“It’s administrative work. Many…meetings. Legal matters,” Issei replied slowly, and then he didn’t talk anymore, although Hanamaki waited expectantly.</p><p>Their eyes met then, each blinking, though not elaborating. They heard each other’s steps and noted each other’s eye color.</p><p>They came to the end of a hall where long green fronds grew up the walls along the doorway and their long flowering vines hung down from the threshold. Issei was nearly tall enough that the lowest-hanging leaves could brush against his wavy hair as they went through.</p><p>The doorway opened into a rectangular room with a wide walking space and three massive windows taking up one of the longer walls. These windows looked out and down towards a wide swath of the city and the riverside far below. Green vines were growing in the thin spaces between the window glass. The opposite wall was a massive mural of roses, with an equally large gamut of blossom colors.</p><p>Issei had not walked this way in several weeks. The forgotten natural beauty on display in this room slowed his walk. He was also slow to notice that Hanamaki had stopped at the second window, looking down at the city. There wasn’t direct sunlight in that space. Nevertheless it brightened him and his worn clothing.  </p><p>“What a beautiful place,” he said quietly. “Hey, uh…you like it here? Not the castle, but Aoba Johsai. Seems like a nice place to live. Lot of trees and healthy green space. Good soil, good air. The big river.”</p><p>“I do,” Issei said, but he was just as quiet. “You from somewhere less nice?”</p><p>“I’m not from anywhere.”</p><p>“…”</p><p>“I mean, I’ve moved a lot, so I don’t claim a hometown,” he corrected, shrugging. “I’ve taken a lot of different types of jobs. Weird jobs. Work has made me live in places for three hours and three years, and lots of times in between.”</p><p>“Hm, so what you’re saying is, you are a jobless, traveling clown?”</p><p>Hanamaki’s lopsided smile came back. His attention went from the view in the window to the butler instead; he finally stepped out of the sun and towards him again. “I am between jobs at the moment, which is not a terrible thing, and do I really look like I’d do clown work? I’m serious. And also, Sir Administrative Worker who has received my money, I didn’t pay you to roast me alive.”</p><p>Issei curled his index finger over his chin to mime some deep thinking he was not actually doing. “Traveling, jobless, <em>medium-well</em> clown? But with hair that pale color, you might be utterly rare and you’ll need much more roasting.”</p><p>Hanamaki jabbed his own index finger in Issei’s face, his expression suddenly tight. “Hey. Motherfucker. I <em>am </em>rare. I’m a do-it-all worker. I do manual labor and I do finances. I can raise houses and cows and horse racing odds, and raise flowers as well as your fancy garden people do. I sail barges and do mercantile negotiations. Last year I did fucking demolition and turned a dam back into a river, by myself. A hell of a lot more than just paperpush-y ‘legal’ matters.”</p><p>That accusing finger fell and shoved back into its owner’s pocket.</p><p>Issei remained unmoved, where he was, but his eyes did soften. “I’m not insulting you. Only joking. And maybe I should know better than to do that with a stranger, just because you joked a bit, too. No offense meant.”</p><p>“Yeah, I thought that,” Hanamaki replied flippantly.</p><p>His scowl melted away as though it were a performance concluded. He raised his chin up at Issei. “Don’t matter if we’re strangers. You’re pretty funny for a little bureaucrat. And no offense meant from me, either. I keep thinking I should shut up ‘cause I’m irritating you, or I will if I haven’t yet. I’m extra chatty ‘cause I’m nervous.”</p><p>“You don’t need to be nervous. And I don’t think you’re irritating. I think you’re…”</p><p>He trailed off in order to think, and wait, and let possibilities swirl in Hanamaki’s eyes. They were a glimmering brown, set below expressive, pointed little brows. They were especially expressive at portraying a feeling of tension that Issei was having fun drawing out.</p><p>“…pretty funny too.”</p><p>For some reason this made Hanamaki scoff as though in a little disbelief. “Be pretty funny if you just called down a squad of guards to beat me up at the garden entrance. By ‘funny’ I mean not funny and I would like, put a curse on you in my dungeon.”</p><p>“You and your threats of bodily harm,” Issei said, then clucked his tongue. He moved his tongue and his words a little slower than needed, to see if Hanamaki would look at his mouth. He did. “It was just a compliment, calm your lack-of-eyebrows.”</p><p>Hanamaki pretended to huff again, jerking his head to one side, which tossed his lovely pink bangs again. They always fell neatly back into their place. He said airily, “Excuse my rudeness, sir. I just didn’t expect such compliments from aristocratic types in peak lapel suits, sir.” He was pointedly making eye contact, but then accidentally looked down at Issei’s chin and curve of the black suitcoat over his shoulders. He force-corrected his wandering eyes.</p><p>“Oh, but I’m flattered, too. I can’t remember the last time someone called me a motherfucker. To my face.”</p><p>“We should get a room together. To flatter each other.”</p><p>Issei sputtered once and laughed. They both did.</p><p>At the same time a pair of cleaning men in smart linen coveralls stopped and danced their feet at one of the doorways. They shied away from entering the room now that they knew it wasn’t empty. Issei had known their presence for a few minutes now, as they’d observed him and the gardener-motherfucker-flatterer talk, but he ignored them. Hanamaki did not appear to notice at all even though they stood just at the edge of his periphery. The cleaners did not dare interrupt.</p><p>Rather than bid them to keep on their way and walk by, Issei continued to ignore them. He took a step back and to the side, taking Hanamaki’s attention with him. He turned his attention towards another empty passageway past the wide windows. “Come on. Flatter me on the way there.”</p><p>Hanamaki was quick to follow, hands in his pockets still. “I’ll write a complimentary letter to your manager for this, my friend. Dear head butler: Mr. Issei took me on a journey—”</p><p>Mr. Issei held open a large, lacquered wooden door in a hall just outside the blossoming room, beckoning his guest through it with a lavish bow. Hanamaki returned the bow before hopping through. Immediately within was a wide set of stone stairs, where he waited for his butler friend to lead the way. When the door fell closed and footsteps on those stairs sounded further and further away, the cleaning men finally made their careful way into the wide room.</p><p>The shorter one whispered aloud, “Does he not see the name on the goddamn suit?”</p><p>“He’s got to. He’s got to be—lord, I don’t know why—”</p><p>“Is he an assassin? The worst assassin? He—I hope he is.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I hope he’s an assassin come to slay us and not just some moron. I hope he <em>tries. </em>Maybe we’ll see something.”</p><p>-</p><p>The stairs hit a landing and then faced another way, and then another way, and then on that new floor they passed a hall full of storage closets and storage movers who all blatantly avoided looking at them. Issei kept his guest engaged and laughing to pull his attention away from their ducked heads. The movers never deviated from their tasks, but none of them bowed or dipped in his presence. As instructed. </p><p>They moved up two more floors and neither of them wavered in their chatter or their breath. Hanamaki paused here and there but never completely stopped talking. But despite his earlier explanation, he never sounded nervous. Issei asked about the many types of work he had done, and Hanamaki had an easy stream of stories to tell on the subject as they walked. Even more impressive, he was very good at telling them.</p><p>“So Jake the seal is my sugar daddy now, right? He’s throwing me all the best fish, but he’s throwing them <em>at </em>me, not <em>to </em>me. He’s pelting me with fish projectiles. Fish missiles. Fish missiles hitting me in a merciless barrage all day long. Sometimes they knocked me over! And the scales keep sticking to me, so I’m looking like an abused mermaid on this raft.”</p><p>“My god,” Issei chuckled, because he’d run out his short supply of deep belly laughter. Even if he wasn’t talking quite as much as Hanamaki was, he never stopped grinning or paying attention. Even though some of the fatigue of the throne room clung. “Ahh, my sides hurt a bit.”</p><p>“Your sides hurt? My back hurt like an old man! Bending over to put all these fish into our net, for minimum wage—”</p><p>“How’s it feel to bend over for a seal?”</p><p>“Like exploitation!” Hanamaki cried, his hand out in front of him almost pleadingly. “Jake was my favorite seal in the bay before he started expecting me to mate with him. Our relationship changed, man. He made me a laughingstock. Even fucking Tsutomu was laughing at me. My wholesome relationship with this marine mammal, ruined. He beat me with both dead and alive fish for six days before he realized he was never gonna get laid.”</p><p>“Maybe you saw him in the wrong light. Seals giving humans fish isn’t always a sign of interspecies romance,” Issei contributed. Two of the house carpenters passed by with perfect timing to hear <em>interspecies romance </em>and Hanamaki did not appear to fear any bodily harm from them. They did incorrectly turn back to gape at the king and the lowly dressed stranger.</p><p>“Maybe he was only interested in you platonically,” he kept on. “Or he viewed you as a pathetic, naked seal who couldn’t catch its own food and Jake wanted to make charitable donations, for tax purposes.”</p><p>“What, so he’s my sugar <em>donor</em>?”</p><p>“Your sugar buddy!” </p><p>“Sea salt buddy.”</p><p>“A mer-patron.”</p><p>“Patron saint of beating my ass.”</p><p>They walked by one of the clerks just then, who covered his mouth to stifle his laughter.</p><p>Hanamaki noticed it and smirked. But he stopped smirking just as quickly. There were white lilies growing at the edges of the hall, where troughs of dirt hugged the wall instead of stone floor tiles. Sunlight came in through rectangular cuts in the roof and semicircle windows at their sides.</p><p>“Patron saint of flowers,” Hanamaki added like a dreamy afterthought. Or like he were softly swearing by that saint, because the loving touch of her fingers was in this hall.</p><p>The width of stone walking space stayed the same but the hall itself widened, creating space for wider and wider spans of of soil at either side. The ceiling grew taller and the plants grew bolder: the greens and whites of Aoba Johsai national colors grew on lattices that reached to the ceiling like columns lining the throne room. Gladiolus flowers bloomed soothing mint-green rather than their common saturated neon. They passed a section of warm-colored zinnia where every bloom seemed to face their direction rather than exactly towards sunlight. The work of master gardeners was on display.</p><p>The wall was now a long stone’s throw away at either side, but the windows were massive enough to see from here: the first ones had been circles and then strange nearly circular openings with rounded edges. Shrinking slices, then growing ones in sequence. Each window in the wall was a phase of the moon.</p><p>“This is it,” Hanamaki said aloud. He saw blue sky and fluffing clouds through the waxing gibbous moon.</p><p>“This is the entrance where chosen guests come in. Gardeners use other ones with less glamour and more space for lugging tools through.”</p><p>“This is <em>it</em>,” he said again. It must have been to himself, to calm his shuddering, inside and out.</p><p>“Will you come out the other side a changed man?” Issei said with an eyebrow quirked.</p><p>“I think so,” his companion said with genuine excitement. He kept looking around but added, “Is this the way you would come when you used to visit?”</p><p>“Sometimes. Remember not to pick anything, all right?” he said, but Hanamaki’s eyes seemed to see through him when they did drift in his direction. He said, louder, “Mr. Hanamaki.”</p><p>This time he looked. He kept pace with Issei when his walk slowed to a crawl and then they stopped entirely. They were parallel with two floor-to-ceiling lattices at their sides and a potted fleet of morning glories. On the lattice, pale purple wisteria fell over the trellis boards like thick waving hair. Issei ignored the mad splash of colors and looked Hanamaki in the eye instead.</p><p>“Did you hear me?”</p><p>This open room was wide, but not empty, so spoken words didn’t echo. Standing surrounded by plants and color gave it a touch of intimacy. Issei had made sure they were standing quite close together.   </p><p>“Yes,” Hanamaki nodded, still nonplussed. “Don’t pick any stems. Touch nothing. Right?”</p><p>“Some things you can touch. Garden plants are meant for some amount of human touch,” Issei replied. “But ask me first. Everything out there is grown and made by master gardeners. Who make significantly more money than you. Or a butler.”  </p><p>A little breeze ruffled the wisteria petals. Hanamaki was not ruffled in the least. “And they will not have strife with me or have any reason to fear me damaging their expensive and gorgeous work.”</p><p>“Or stealing it. Or ripping out of the ground. Or setting fire to. Or eating. All of which have happened. You will be much more than <em>arrested </em>for doing anything out of line here.”</p><p>“Not today, sir. Not me.”</p><p>“…There will be fountains where you can wash your hands just before we reach the plants themselves.”</p><p>“I will respect them,” Hanamaki replied, smiling a little. More than the gardeners themselves, he meant the plants, which made him a little better than a plain gardener. “And you, for being so overly nice to me. You will get your money’s worth out of me.”</p><p><em>His </em>money and not Hanamaki’s money anymore, as he said, had been transferred from his suitcoat pocket to his pants pocket sometime during the walk up here. It was not even a quarter of what one “chosen guest” would have to pay for an afternoon in the Royal Gardens. But it was much more than a man with Hanamaki’s dress and manner would ordinarily have available to use. It was a suspicious amount of money.</p><p>It was suspicious that he was even here. That he first appeared sitting in a window twenty feet off the ground from the outside. That he kept up this very strange song and dance about not recognizing the king of Aoba Johsai. It was nice, that all these things had distracted and engaged Issei as long as they had.</p><p>“It will really ruin my day if you’re actually just here to kill me,” Issei stated. “More than that, it’ll ruin yours.”</p><p>His face and brows and affect were all flat. Hanamaki’s were all warped in scandalous shock. No knives or poison smoke clouds appeared, though.</p><p>For once he did not appear to know what to say. His replies were stuttering and full of unnatural pause: “I—I’m not, not even, that—ah—” But by that point, Issei’s small flash of both wariness and weariness were passing.</p><p>“I’m not here to kill you?” he sort of asked. “I’m <em>not </em>here to kill you. Or the royal family, or anybody. Already said that. I’m…sorry? That you really have to um, fear that? Is that why you’re having a bad time at work recently? I mean it just seems like it. Like you don’t like it.”</p><p>It was not. But Issei did not give this verbal answer. He gave his own unnatural pause, because it mattered not what Hanamaki thought about his “work”.</p><p>“Maybe I’m just nervous about taking a stranger to the Gardens,” Issei pretended to muse aloud. He blinked slowly. The sun through the many moon-windows, the long walk and six flights of stairs to get here, or even the lingering feeling of the throne room, all made him feel lethargic suddenly. There was nothing he was willing to elaborate on in regards to “work.” “But the king said you could come. And I haven’t been there in a while. We should walk around.”</p><p>“If I hypothetically were to dive onto a shrub, you’d tackle me,” Hanamaki told him as though encouraging exactly that.</p><p>“Yes,” Issei agreed. Tackling sounded fun. Fun enough to make him grin again for just a second. “And the first thing I’ll do to you once you’re in your prison cell is shave your little eyebrows.”</p><p>“Could I have some of yours? For modesty.”</p><p>Issei quirked both brows upward. “No.”</p><p>That made Hanamaki grin for just a second, too, and what tension had been present melted neatly away. Luckily, they both had some aptitude for making the other do that. The conversation on the way here was a breath of fresh air. Hanamaki would be remembered, even if he jumped out another twenty-foot window with his money back in tow.</p><p>Another little breeze came through the many moon windows. The zinnia behind them all bowed their blossoms in a red-and-yellow wave, or a synchronized nod.</p><p>Issei nodded to himself too and lifted both hands. For a moment Hanamaki’s brows quirked upward, too, like he expected to be tackled at long last. The so-called butler dipped one finger beneath the edge of his glove and lifted it off his right hand, then did the same for the left. Hanamaki’s eyes watched the wave of each finger. He looked excited, expectant, about the way most visitors did coming here for the first time. Issei more or less folded the gloves and tucked them in his pocket with his little bag of bribery money.</p><p>He started walking again and Hanamaki followed. “Let’s go, criminal.”</p><p>“You’re so cool,” Hanamaki sighed. He had a smirk that was stronger on one side of mouth than another, creating that lopsided smile again. “I’m gonna tell people about you when I leave here.”</p><p>“Tell them what?” he asked airily. He tossed his head a little, feeling a little proud. The wavy fringe over his brow bounced and Hanamaki’s brown eyes bounced.  </p><p>Before he could really answer, Issei spoke again: “You know, I have some friends who work on the docks and shipping vessels. They see dolphins in the lagoon a lot, I think I’ll tell them your seal story.”</p><p>Hanamaki balked like he’d been pelted with a small fish. “Dolphins? In the lagoon out there, you mean? We’re like two days’ boat ride from the ocean.”</p><p>His tone had Issei humming. “Hmm, worried about new marine mammals coming after you?”</p><p>“A…a little.”</p><p>“We live on a river and they are river dolphins. Unlike in your previous romantic relationships, humans throw fish at <em>them, </em>like you’d throw bread crumbs to ducks. To my knowledge, humans don’t mate with them. But there might be secret, forbidden relationships for all I know—”</p><p>“You are traumatizing me, right now.”</p><p>“Yes, I planned to do that, anyway, if dolphins did moonlight sonatas for their lovers, they would probably squeak with B-flat—</p><p>“This is for the Kadupul,” Hanamaki interrupted sharply.</p><p>“Hana—”</p><p>“Sir, I am going to stare at that Kadupul. Unblinkingly. And—”</p><p>“Maki—”</p><p>“I ain’t gonna be taken advantage of by Jake the seal and Issei the butler in one lifetime.”</p><p>“Okay, seal whore.”</p><p>“Oh my god! I paid you!”</p><p>“But what did you pay <em>Jake</em>?”</p><p>The conversation was not especially loud or energized. Some of these things they mumbled. They kept climbing the occasional four-and-five sets of steps till the spot where the hall widened and soil took up more space than stone walkway was not even visible anymore. This entryway was longer than a couple of houses next to each other, but neither of them felt that length. If anything, they reached the end of this entryway too early. </p><p>“<em>Now, </em>this is it,” Issei assured him. All the manicured flora was behind them. Before was an extra-wide pair of humble wood doors. Smooth mahogany with little moulding or design, no decoration, and no doorknobs.</p><p>Hanamaki was staring ahead at the wood surface with carefully tempered excitement. Issei touched that surface and skimmed his fingers along till they settled easily into a near-invisible notch in the wood. He pulled, hard, and the right-hand door slid easily into the wall. When sunlight hit them from outside, Hanamaki grinned so broadly it showed all his teeth, even if he was blinded and squinting.</p><p>“Walk carefully, now. Go to one of the fountains and cleanse your hands.”</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Hanamaki replied.</p><p>He walked into the sun with a shuddering breath. Once he was past, Issei turned around and began to close the door the same way. With his back turned, he listened. Hanamaki’s steps continued, slow and careful.</p><p>When he turned back a wispy cloud had covered the sun and allowed them better sight. Just outside the door was a stone patio large enough for multiple chairs and guests. There was a fountain to the left and right of the door carved in the shape of upturned leaves holding dew in their basins. A mosaic set into the patio floor painted white and green stripes under the walkers’ feet, to remind them whose property they loitered on.</p><p>Hanamaki took a few steps past these things. He had nothing to say right now. He had also walked right past the cleaning fountains, but this was no great issue. It was fun to watch people admire the place for the first time.</p><p>They looked out on a little green kingdom made on top of the widest castle rooftop, its edges not visible from their vantage point. The Royal Gardens were the height of growing beauty that the rest of the kingdom and culture emulated; it was made to look like and be jealously consumed as a work of art. Flowers and shrubs and trees were spread across the space in order of their color, their height and their aesthetic principle.</p><p>This meant that Hanamaki saw welcoming roses near the patio, expanding into voluminous white hydrangea beyond, to a splitting walkway in front of a royal poinciana, a tree which flowered brilliant red in the summer, and year-round here at Castle Seijoh. It meant Hanamaki saw the white Kadupul flower within view almost immediately, beyond the poinciana, and that a multitude of trees stood between a range of flowers and the nearest pond. The bridges gleamed even from here. The stone on the riverbanks fell naturally towards the water. The sun shone on all of it.</p><p>A man with gardening gloves gently separated some viny growths on a whitewood arbor over a pathway, standing in the arbor’s shadow. He was the only other person in view. His eyes were immediately drawn by the sole splash of black that was Issei’s outfit. And then he froze, and he and the king stared at each other over a distance far too great to see each other’s expressions.</p><p>The king expressed his decree from less than an hour ago to the gardener, in case he had somehow not yet heard. From a long distance away, from the shadow of the little arbor, the gardener heard, nodded, and kept at his business, albeit much slower.</p><p>Hanamaki saw only the patio steps and the map of color and beauty ahead. He was turning his head to look at it all, slowly, slowly, when Issei put a bare hand on his shoulder.</p><p>“If you could wash your hands, please, sir.”</p><p>“Oh shit. Yes. I was going to. I wasn’t going to walk off.” He put his own hand on Issei’s shoulder, staring up at him. “Holy shit, you <em>stopped </em>coming here?”</p><p>“Had other things to do,” he replied, dragging his companion backward. They stopped at the first fountain and held their hands under cool water. It was tinged with something that tingled their hands and swept traces of filth from their skin. Issei used to know what it was. Hanamaki did not ask what it was.</p><p>“This is it,” Hanamaki said.</p><p>“This is it. What do you want to do?”</p><p>“Walk around. Where you tell me it’s okay to.”</p><p>“Walk as you please. Don’t run. I will you if something is off-limits or should be avoided for now.”</p><p>Hanamaki nodded without looking at him. He walked very slow indeed, taking each patio step on its own so that he could look out and observe, and every step memorize a new painting in his sightline. He picked up a bit of speed after touching the ground again. Issei began to prowl just behind him, keeping him in his shadow. Hanamaki was not likely to have an outburst or fit of rage in the Garden right now with the quiet awe he was displaying.</p><p>Issei asked anyway. “<strong>What are you thinking right now?</strong>”</p><p>“Those peonies sound so healthy,” he said easily. He was vaguely looking in the direction of parallel lines of peonies, reds, whites and pinks intermixed and growing together. Two sparrows stood chirping on the ground in front of the flowers. They flew off as the two men approached; then there was no sound coming from around the peonies at all. </p><p>Hanamaki crouched down near them, looking down at their blossoms and the heavy green stems. Issei remained standing and did not pay attention to him after that.</p><p>They had halved the distance between themselves and the lone master gardener, who was trying to hide his observation of the two. Issei did not care about his observation. He looked off into the distance past the poinciana and the oval-shaped pond and the red lacquer bridge with an arbor cover over the top of it. He didn’t see any of these things. He didn’t care.</p><p>There was no pleasant Hanamaki-led story to distract him just now. Perhaps he’d gotten too used to easy, clownish distractions in the last hour. Or less. Without a funny story to listen or contribute to, the Royal Gardens felt awfully similar to the throne room, nearly a hundred feet below them. They felt an uncomfortable way that Issei could not very well describe, only carry, like he had earlier this morning.</p><p>“Is that a no?”</p><p>Hanamaki asked him a question and he apparently did not hear or process it in the least.</p><p>He asked back, eyes vacant, “What.”</p><p>“Can I touch these peonies at all? Maybe with gloves only?”</p><p>Issei did not remember the policy that was specific to peonies in this quarter of the Garden. “You can touch them,” he decided. “Without gloves. It’s all right.”</p><p>“Thanks,” he replied, turning around again. As thanks for the peonies themselves, for being allowed in to royal grounds for a steal of a price, for avoiding arrest and perhaps mutilation in an underground cell.</p><p>Hanamaki had a lot to be thankful for despite becoming massively poorer less than an hour ago. How he would make any of that money back, being jobless at the moment, remained an unspoken subject. Most people of Hanamaki’s dress and manner only got that amount of money by taking it from others.</p><p>It felt more than uncomfortable assigning that judgment to Hanamaki. And that was a useless feeling as well. He did not know the man. He did not know his real reason for wanting to be here, and in that moment, the king did not care.</p><p>That lack of caring overwhelmed him suddenly. He turned around where he stood and walked away.</p><p>A short walk away, down the walkway stood a bench carved entirely out of marble. Cool linen pillows rested on it, and Issei rested on these. He set one ankle atop one knee, one arm on the hard arm rest, and stared ahead.</p><p>He returned to the throne room in a way, out of the sun and into the back-and-forth switching of sunlight and green stained-glass-light. Flashes giving him headaches that turned into migraines. The natural perfume of the Gardens was strange in a mental mindscape of the throne room where most scents were meat, sweat, metal or incense.</p><p>There was no one in the throne room but him.</p><p>There was no one in the throne room but him.</p><p>There was someone standing by the bench, by him.</p><p>Issei looked up through his bangs at Hanamaki. He had finally buttoned up his shirt and even smoothed the collar.</p><p>“I thought you fucking left me here,” he huffed. “To find my own way out. Or be arrested.”</p><p>By the mark of his shadow, Issei deduced some fifteen minutes had passed. Or more. While he had done nothing, really. Fifteen minutes on this bench felt like fifteen minutes of sleep in a night. It would be painful to rise from it right now.</p><p>“No,” he replied. That word alone answered nothing. It was hardly relevant to the words that came just before it. It fell like a rock between them. </p><p>“So you just…came to have a little rest over here?”</p><p>“I need a little rest,” the king replied, not because he spoke that out of his own heart, but he took the words easily from Hanamaki. They were serviceable. They were right.</p><p>His guest shook his head a little bit, shaking off confusion. “Wh—what’s wrong?”</p><p>“Nothing.”</p><p>Hanamaki stared. A little breeze blew at his bangs, and they settled back into place over his furrowed brows.</p><p>For a minute they remained in their places and stared. They stared across a strange chasm that had not existed between them before. None of their conversations till now had had this tinge of being uncomfortable, uncommunicative strangers. Sometimes strangers simply walked away from each other and never spoke again. It happened every day, everywhere.</p><p>Issei looked away, for if he did not want to have a conversation, then it would not be had. But Takahiro Hanamaki did not have a reason to know that.  </p><p>Hanamaki sat down, leaning with his elbows on his knees and his fingers laced together, and his eyes on Issei.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” he asked again.</p><p>-</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>MatsuHana acquaintanceship and friendship is GROWING. You ever go on a school trip as a kid and meet someone from another class you never talked to but you and them just CLICK and you're best friends by the end of the day? This is MatsuHana and this is their day. </p><p>Despite this story's length already exceeding my expectations, these long chapters and this slow growth is still easier to me to write and conceptualize than just writing two jokey-joke pun-sayers who are automatically besties and just say puns at each other infinitely (fanon sometimes?). If that's all they are, then I do not care.</p><p>Next chapter coming WHO KNOWS WHEN, because I'm a slow writer with a lot of other WIPs, I just got into the Sukufushi ship in Jujutsu Kaisen, and I'm feeling the pressure for updating two WIPs in particular that are not this. Next chapter comes when it comes. But it will be the "Wanna skip work?" chapter. </p><p>*EXTRA STORY NOTES YOU CAN READ IF YOU WANT TO, IF NOT THANKS FOR COMING BYE*</p><p>- I read up a lot on popular, pretty flowers and looked at a lot of botanical gardens, but if anyone thinks my description of gardens is dumb and looks like Page 1 Google Results (even though it's not) feel free to laugh</p><p>- How Issei "expressed" something to the gardener who was far away is deliberately vague. </p><p>- Hanamaki has had a lot of weird-cool and weird-lame jobs and I decided him having strife with marine animals will be a running joke. Maybe it graduates to a "theme" if I give it enough narrative spotlight. </p><p>Do you want to see someone beating Hanamaki with a fish, for sport? I do.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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